Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies for Young People: A New Agenda for Secondary Education

In a global development community where gains and successes are always hard-won, providing youngsters with a dynamic education that takes them from primary through secondary to tertiary education and beyond and that helps spur economic growth is surely one of the best investments a country can make, especially when it applies equally to girls and boys. The challenges facing developing countries and transition economies are twofold: to increase access to secondary schooling for all young people and, at the same time, to improve the quality and relevance of secondary education. These challenges must be met in the complicating but also potentially enabling environment of globalization and the technology-based knowledge society. Secondary education is the highway between primary schooling, tertiary education, and the labor market. Its ability to connect the different destinations and to take young people where they want to go in life is crucial. This highway can constrict the expansion of educational attainment and opportunity, or it can open up pathways for students' advancement. 'Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies for Young People' explores the key issues facing secondary education in the 21st century. Based on surveys of education specialists around the world, the "tried and true" elements of the policy framework presented here will assist decisionmakers in developing countries and transition economies as they make plans to expand, reform, and transform their secondary education systems.